Noise and nuisance

We deal with nuisances such as noise, odour and excessive light from residential and commercial premises.

When is help available?

Our service is available 365 days a year, including weekends and bank holidays.

If the issue is happening now, please call us on 020 8753 1081 during office hours (9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday) and 020 8748 8588 outside office hours for an officer to respond to your complaint today.

Contact us in confidence to report a problem. We will normally visit you to assess whether the problem is a nuisance as defined in law.

This is a subjective assessment by a professional officer, who will:

contact the person responsible for the nuisance

tell them that we are carrying out an investigation

tell them their responsibilities and how to reduce the noise.

We will try to resolve the noise nuisance and prevent it happening again.

We have legal powers, in most cases, to stop noise nuisance, but to use these powers we have to witness the noise from inside your property. We aim to respond to 95 per cent of calls after 6pm within 60 minutes and 80 per cent of calls within 45 minutes. During the day our response time is two hours.

What we need to know

It helps our investigation if you can tell us:

the type of noise such as loud music or air conditioning

the exact address or location the noise is coming from

the exact dates and times when the noise starts and stops

the effect of the noise such as it disturbs your sleep, interferes with your television, radio or conversation.

What you can do to help

Many people don’t realise they’re annoying their neighbours. If you can approach them safely, the best way to deal with the problem is to speak to the person or company responsible and explain the problem. A face-to-face conversation is usually better than a phone call or email. You may find that you can sort it out in a friendly way without any further action.

If reasoning with your neighbour does not help, or you do not want to approach them, then you should contact us.

If that doesn’t work, for example if we are unable to witness the nuisance, you might consider individual action and taking your complaint to a court.